Interestingly, in this country there seems to be one almost foolproof way to prevent single parenthood (besides contraception): college. Only 6 percent of college-educated single women had children from 2006-2008, according to the National Marriage Project, a pro-marriage think tank housed at the University of Virginia, versus 54 percent of women who didn’t graduate from high school and 44 percent of those with high school diplomas. Murray also finds that college-educated women are far less likely to become single moms; college-educated couples are also less likely to get divorced or to have kids who spend time in single-parent homes. If they don’t like contraception (the easiest way to help single women avoid having kids), they should at least push college as the solution to too many kids being raised by single moms.

Of course, they don’t. In fact, they’re doing the opposite: Santorum famously derided Obama as a “snob” for wanting to make college more available, and all the GOP candidates’ proposed federal budgets cut funding for Pell Grants and other college support. So two key ways to cut down on single-parent homes – contraception and college – are off the table for discussion.

If conservatives were worried about children, they would support expanding access to college education for women. I think, at this point, it’s safe to say that they’re not worried about the children in single parent homes, but the idea that female-only headed households ‘make men obsolete.’

Correlation does not equal causation. Smarter women go on with their education, as do women with more self-control and better ability to plan for the future. Those features would also be associated with lower unplanned pregnancy rates. It doesn’t imply that education can confer the relevant life skills.